During the first ever online White House town hall meeting, President Barack Obama answered a question submitted online about legalizing Marijuana to boost the economy.
(CBS)

(Newser)
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Sure, President Obama’s online town hall meeting today ended up being mostly like a normal press conference, writes Jose Antonio Vargas for the Washington Post, with Obama answering mostly “predictable” questions with “tried-and-tested policy responses.” What makes the event important is that the president was asked questions that received the most votes, with little White House filtering.

Such an opening of government, via the Internet, is a big step for US democracy. It signals that the administration has found “a place for the crowd-sourcing, here-comes-everybody ethos of the Web to be a part of the governing dialogue,” Vargas writes. “The president himself just proved it.”

Did anyone else notice that this is just more talk? The questions that get the most votes are just the most talked about, not the hard questions for which there are no press conference answers. 21st century politics as usual.